


Paint Me a Picture of You

by bigfeetbiggersocks



Category: Bill & Ted (Movies)
Genre: Feelings Realization, First Kiss, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Idiots in Love, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:01:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26832607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigfeetbiggersocks/pseuds/bigfeetbiggersocks
Summary: Bill's art skill had improved quite a bit over the years, and at some point he started to transition into figure drawing, using whatever and whoever he could find as a reference. Usually his model was Ted, who he enjoyed making sketches of while watching Ted go about his everyday life, capturing the overly animated way in which he went about menial tasks. As a result of this he had sketchbooks filled to the brim with illustrations of Ted folding his laundry, and of Ted burning their eggs, and of Ted sprawled across the couch, napping. He kept these drawings secret, though, stored in a drawer far away from Ted.Bill wasn't sure why exactly he felt so compelled to keep these pieces hidden from Ted (he never seemed sure of anything about Ted anymore), but it felt right. There was some kind of inexplicable fear around the idea of Ted discovering them. So they stayed tucked away in the corner of his sock drawer. At least, they did.
Relationships: Ted "Theodore" Logan & Bill S. Preston Esq., Ted "Theodore" Logan/Bill S. Preston Esq.
Comments: 13
Kudos: 113





	Paint Me a Picture of You

When Bill was eleven he found himself absently doodling on any piece of paper he could get his hands on, whether that be blank notebook paper or his unfinished math homework. He'd scribble small spaceships and angry dinosaurs and galloping horses all over the margins (and the math problems), covering the page until the white was barely visible. 

Eventually the doodles migrated onto the backs of his hands, curling over his knuckles and around his fingers. Sometimes he came from school with smiley faces and scary aliens covering every inch of exposed skin on his arms. His dad had a tendency to lecture him on something called "lead poisoning" whenever that happened, though, and Bill was smart enough to figure out that he could only draw on the parts of his arms that he could cover with his shirt sleeves.

This trend only got worse with age.

At twelve Bill started drawing on the sides of his desk, erasing the already there dicks and replacing them with a variety of different animals. At thirteen his drawings had begun to migrate onto the bathroom walls, both inside and outside of the stalls. They were still fairly random, a collection of whatever he was thinking about at the time, but to Bill the unpredictability of it made it even more fun. Ted would come back from his bathroom breaks each week with a grin painted on his face as he recounted all of the wonderful drawings he'd noticed on the white bricks, showering Bill in compliments. Bill would've been lying if he said Ted's praise and excitement didn't motivate him to publicly spread his art even more often. 

When Bill turned fifteen he got his hands on a can of black spray paint for the first time. It was stolen from his garage, nestled away in a secret spot his dad must've thought Bill couldn't find. He called Ted not long after discovering it, convincing him to sneak out with him on a clear night in mid-July. Their goal was to spray paint the side of an abandoned building not too far from Bill's house. Ted was reluctant at first, but eventually agreed.

They had started out by passing the can back and forth between them, mindlessly adding dicks and boobs to the wall, giggling like idiots. At some point, though, Ted stopped reaching for the paint and simply settled for watching Bill create a horse's head in the open space between their graffiti instead.

"Woah, dude." Bill turned to face Ted, who was staring at the horse with wide eyes and an open mouth. "That's a most excellent stallion." 

Bill blushed in that same nervous way he did whenever Ted complimented his art. Even after all this time he wasn't exactly used to the praise. "Oh, uh, thanks, dude. I was brainstorming ideas for our band's logo, since every good band has a boadacious logo, and I came up with this one a couple of days ago." 

"Bill, man! This is perfect!" Bill's cheeks flashed red like two neon signs, but (thankfully) it was too dark for Ted to fully notice.

"You think so?"

"I know so, dude!"

They air guitared together, twin smiles on their faces. Bill remembers feeling his cheeks ache slightly from how widely he was grinning.

He began drawing stallions everywhere.

By sixteen Bill had a whole slew of horses on each of his binders, across the knees of his jeans, and even in the corners of each of his posters. Ted didn't hesitate to point out and compliment every one, and Bill couldn't explain why that made him feel as warm and fuzzy inside as it did.

Bill also branched out to other forms of creativity in his junior year. He had started cropping his shirts and customizing his jeans, even managing to buy a couple tubes of acrylic paint from the local art store. Granted, he could afford the three primary colors and a tube of black and white, but he loved them nonetheless. In less than a month Bill's denim collection had gone from exclusively boring blue jeans to a rainbow mess that was uniquely his. He loved it, and so did Ted.

In fact, Ted loved it so much that he even asked Bill to paint some of his clothes for him, and Bill happily obliged. He was handed a pile of shirts and sweats after school one day, and wasted no time in getting to decorate them. The effort was totally worth it when he saw just how excited Ted looked to be wearing clothes adorned with Bill's handiwork. 

Seeing Ted parade around Bill's artwork at school, at the mall, and at Circle K made Bill feel a little bit dizzy, something that left him most perplexed, especially when coupled with the warmth and fuzziness he typically experienced around Ted. Bill did his best to ignore all of these things.

Everybody else gave them funny looks, and the guys at school sometimes laughed whenever they passed by, but Bill didn't care. He and Ted looked most excellent, and that's all that really mattered.

On his seventeenth birthday he and Ted went to the music shop just around the corner and purchased a pair of guitars they'd had their eyes on for months now. They'd both picked up jobs at the mall after discovering the guitars, and Joanna and Elizabeth both contributed to their "Wyld Stallyns Gets Rad Guitars" fund. It took them a grand total of three and a half months to come up with the money they needed.

Bill immediately added a small horse's head to his guitar when he got home. It only took a few days for Ted to notice, and, unsurprisingly, compliment it. What was surprising, however, was Ted asking Bill to teach him how to draw their logo so that Ted could add a matching stallion to his guitar. Bill agreed without any hesitation, pulling out a folder and some pencils.

They spent a long time huddled together in the coroner of his garage practicing drawing horse's heads together on the backs of their homework. It was taking Ted a long time to master the curves and hard edges of their logo, but Bill was a most patient teacher. 

"The neck looks way too long, dude. I think I made a wyld giraffe stallyn." He shifted the paper towards Bill so that he could get a better look.

"Yeah, dude I think you did." They laughed together as Ted traced along the long neck of his supposed stallion. "I can show you how to do it if you want." Ted nodded, still smiling widely. 

Bill placed his hand over top of Ted's, choosing not to focus on how the contact made his stomach tie itself into knots. He then guided Ted's hand across the page and in one fluid motion they created the neck and top half of the horse's head. 

"There, just like that."

Ted said nothing, opting instead to watch Bill's hand intently as it returned back to Bill's lap. He nodded again, snapping his attention back to the paper.

"Thanks, dude." he said, but it had sounded slightly off.

When Bill was nineteen he and Ted moved into their very own apartment, together. It was decorated with brightly colored second-hand furniture, piles of half-written sheet music, and a variety of different bands' memorabilia. Oh, and tons and tons of Bill's drawings.

His skill had improved quite a bit over the years, and at some point he started to transition into figure drawing, using whatever and whoever he could find as a reference. Usually his model was Ted, who he enjoyed making sketches of while watching Ted go about his everyday life, capturing the overly animated way in which he went about menial tasks. As a result of this he had sketchbooks filled to the brim with illustrations of Ted folding his laundry, and Ted burning their eggs, and Ted sprawled across the couch, napping. He kept these drawings secret, though, stored in a drawer far away from Ted. 

Bill wasn't sure why exactly he felt so compelled to keep these pieces hidden from Ted (he never seemed sure of anything about Ted anymore), but it just felt right. There was some kind of inexplicable fear around the idea of Ted discovering them. So they stayed tucked away in the corner of his sock drawer. At least, they did.

Twenty-one year old Ted had decided he was really into spring cleaning for some reason. Maybe it was his way of coping with their recent split from the princesses, or maybe it was just another one of Ted's odd phases, but the reason behind it didn't really matter. What mattered was that Ted wanted to deep clean their apartment that spring, including all of Bill's stuff. Bill hadn't thought much of it at the time.

In all actuality, Bill was a little grateful for his roommate's sudden desire to neaten up. Their apartment was messy as hell, unsurprising as two young bachelors from California weren't exactly the model for organized living. There were more clothes on their floor than in their closet, and a whirlwind of papers covering almost every possible surface. The stack of pizza boxes in the corner of their room didn't help their case either.

What Bill didn't consider, though, was that Ted's spring cleaning session meant that Ted would be rifling through his dresser drawers. Ted would be digging through the second drawer from the bottom, the one with that could never really close fully, and Ted would discover the three sketchbooks Bill kept there. Bogus.

Bill jumped up to stop Ted before he could reach the knob, but it was too late. The drawer was wide open and all of Bill's secrets were exposed.

At first Ted seemed excited to open up the sketchbooks. 

"Bill, dude, why didn't you tell me about these?" he asked, holding up two of the three books in his hands. 

It felt like every muscle in Bill's body was at attention, and his throat was suddenly drier than California air on a hot summer day. He gulped.

"Can I look through them? Your artwork is most boadacious." Bill was tempted to say no, but he knew that would set off alarm bells in Ted's head, and the last thing he wanted to do was worry him, so he ultimately nodded.

"Sick!'' Ted flipped to the first page of the sketchbook currently in his left hand. And-

"Woah, Bill, are these drawings of me?" Bill immediately began searching his voice for any sign of disgust or discomfort, anything that would suggest that he was put off by the idea of Bill sketching him so often, but Bill found none. If anything, Ted sounded curious, intrigued by the drawings. 

Bill nodded again. He couldn't bring himself to say anything, the words clogging his throat, refusing to come out. 

"There's a lot of me here, man." He was moving through the pages, studying each drawing intently before moving to the next one. The nauseous expression Bill was waiting to see on Ted's face never came.

He just kept looking through the sketchbook.

"These are excellent, dude. But why are they all of me?" 

And for once in his life Bill knew the answer to that. 

"I like drawing you, dude." he said, his body finally letting him speak. "I like you, dude."

Ted smiled, nodding. "That's cool! I like you too, dude." 

Ted wasn't getting it. 

"No, dude, I like you like you." Bill ran a hand through his hair and forced himself not to avert his gaze, wanting to see Ted's reaction.

It took a minute for Bill's words to sink in, but Ted still didn't look disgusted even when they did. 

"You gay like me like me?" 

Somehow Bill's whole body found a way to go even more still, and he seemed to have forgotten how to breathe. 

"Yeah, I gay like you like you."

Ted nodded again, but this time it was a much smaller gesture, intended more for himself than for Bill. He looked like he was still processing everything. Bill couldn't peel his eyes away, afraid he might've just lost his best friend and most excellent colleague. 

Ted took a couple of steps towards him, stopping at the foot of his bed. "What if I gay like you like you too? Would that be non-heinous?" 

Holy shit, dude. Bill relaxed ever so slightly.

"That'd be most non-heinous."

"Non-non-non-henious?" Ted slid onto Bill's bed finally, sitting closer together than they needed to. Bill didn't mind.

"Non-non-non-non-non-henious." Bill leaned towards him, unable to fight the smile that had found its way into his face. 

"Excellent, dude." Ted leaned even closer to Bill, an identical smile on his face. 

"Most excellent, indeed." Bill needed no other prompting to close the little bit of distance between them, joining their lips in a kiss that was a long time coming. He could feel Ted's smile against his, and the tip of Ted's nose was pressed awkwardly into his cheek, but Bill couldn't find it in himself to care. He was kissing Ted, his other half in all things, and it was the most perfect thing Bill had ever experienced. 

They barely let themselves pull back for air before crashing right back into one another, this time letting their bodies meld together in the most natural way. It was so right, how they fit together, and it left Bill wondering how they managed to go so long without trying this before.

"Dude,"

"Dude,"

Ted ran his thumb along the curve of Bill's jaw, still smiling. Bill couldn't do much else but melt, completely and absolutely. He was so gone for Ted.

"I think I love you, dude." 

And what else was Bill supposed to do besides reply with: "Dude, I think I love you too."

**Author's Note:**

> I saw a post on tumblr that I can't find anymore abt Bill probably loved to draw because of how his jeans were always covered in doodles, n yk the stallion he had on the shoulder rod his crop top in excellent adventure, so naturally I had to run w this idea n turn it into a full blown thing  
> as usual this totally isn't beta read so excuse any grammar fuckups or tense switches (I also wrote this at 2am) I was just having a good time w my current favorite idiot musicians  
> hope y'all enjoy it !


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